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Editorial

Don’t operate in the dark

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Saturday November 9, 2013 5:03 AM

It’s hard to decide which is more disturbing: that Ohio University trustees doled out raises to
their president and his wife during a meeting from which the public was excluded, or that it didn’t
see a problem with breaking the state’s open-meetings laws until news coverage prompted a redo.

The Dispatch reported the illegal activity on Wednesday. Campus officials quickly said the
board would postpone the raises, which are retroactive to July, until it had a chance to vote on
the resolution at its next public meeting.

Though the university maintains it did nothing wrong, the board risked having the raises ruled
invalid under Ohio’s Open Meetings Act, which requires public bodies to take official action and
conduct all deliberations on official business only in “open meetings where the public may attend
and observe.”

The raises, a spokeswoman allowed, had been “approved by consensus in the executive session for
personnel matters that occurred in the morning on Nov. 1.”

Unless OU board members possess powers of telepathy, they most certainly discussed increasing
the pay of President Roderick J. McDavis by $4,150, and of his wife, Deborah McDavis, by $300. His
total pay for the year would be $493,400; hers would be $31,200.

Unfortunately, disregard for doing the public’s business in public is distressingly common. As
the General Assembly has chipped away at the state’s Sunshine Laws, eroding citizens’ ability to
monitor their government, public boards have gotten the wrong message:

• In September, three Columbus Board of Education members admitted on the campaign trail that
the public never heard their heated discussions or questioning involving the district’s
data-rigging scandal.

The
Dispatch sued over seven closed-door sessions, and a Franklin County magistrate in March
ordered the school board to halt the practice. A judge has yet to rule on whether the meetings were
held illegally, but such secrecy poisons public trust.

• In February 2012, a Franklin County judge smacked the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral
Directors with nearly $26,000 in legal fees and court costs for violating Ohio’s open-meetings law.
The board had emerged from a closed-door debate to instantly deny a petition to open a Columbus
funeral home.

• In November 2010, a state audit of the Franklin County Veterans Service Commission found its
board had approved “excessive” raises — 66 to 80 percent — for top managers in closed sessions. The
audit found 39 violations of the Ohio Open Meetings Act over three years. Meanwhile, ailing
veterans complained they were denied financial help.

In each of these cases, there were real victims of the secret deliberations, including children
who were denied additional educational help as adults pocketed bonuses, a small-business owner who
couldn’t open and veterans who struggled to pay rent or medical bills.

Taxpayers own their government. They have an absolute right to honesty, transparency and
accountability by those who work for them.